(Barbra Streisand, US 1983, 133 min., DCP)
More than any film, Yentl is perhaps closest to Barbra Streisand’s heart. She purchased the rights to the story ten years before she was able to convince Hollywood to make it. When she was finally successful, Streisand was the director, co-writer, co-producer, and star, lending her legendary voice to such songs as “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” Yentl is a young Jewish girl living in Poland in 1904 who wishes to become a religious scholar in an age when this was the exclusive realm of men. She decides to disguise herself as a boy and takes her late brother’s name, Anshel, to study Talmudic Law. As Anshel, she befriends and falls in love with a classmate in her school, Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), who is engaged to a local girl named Hadass (Amy Irving). When Hadass’s family rejects the engagement, Avigdor convinces Anshel/Yentl as his best friend to marry her instead. Yentl received an Oscar for Best Original Score, and Streisand became the first woman to win Best Director at the Golden Globes.